


clearer in my mind

by neige23



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Complete, Drowning, Established Relationship, Explicit Language, Harry's Glasses, Hurt Draco Malfoy, Hurt Harry Potter, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Seizures, Triwizard Tournament, for now
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-07
Updated: 2019-08-07
Packaged: 2020-08-10 23:03:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,863
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20143450
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/neige23/pseuds/neige23
Summary: Harry wakes up in a place that's cold, and dark. And he's alone -- but not for long. A rememory of the lake, the boys who were made to swim through it, and the costs of carrying pain.





	clearer in my mind

Harry blinked once, then again, trying to make out what was in front of him. He didn’t know where he was, or how he had gotten there – all he knew was that it was cold, dark, and sudden. 

He heard what was maybe a cheer, or people chanting, but the sound of it was wrong; it reminded Harry of the way Arthur’s salvaged records sounded when they listened to them in the shed, tinny and weather-warped. Or the way his husband’s voice slipped in and out of his ears when they were in the bath together, emerging and resurfacing. 

He thought that perhaps he’d better put on his glasses. He reached to his left, then to his right, patting to see where they’d landed. But there was no floor to be felt; Harry’s hand dropped slowly, sickly, falling too effortlessly in front of him. 

He turned it, palm facing up, and saw brackish beams of light refracting across it. Several delirious moments of hard thinking passed. Confusion turned to recognition, to panic. Panic was forcibly subsided by years of Ministry training. 

And then all order was gone when something tawny and smooth brushed past his shoulder. Harry twisted quickly in its wake, grasping his leg, fingers scrabbling to find a wand to unsheathe. He did so. He found which way was up. He breathed – or almost breathed, not with nose or mouth – from distant, physical memory. 

He reached forward to part the weeds between this thing and him, and then a low howl of grief came up and out of a place he had locked away so many years before. Or, it would have been a howl, if physics allowed – it became more of a sigh, jettying away from him in wringed-up rivulets. _My boy._

A cloud of bronze hair swirled above the boy’s eyes, which were looking at Harry in a way that was both kind and incredulous. It was Cedric, as he had been when he’d seen him last. _Harry, they still have him,_ he mouthed. Harry nodded, buying time to think. 

It couldn’t be him. There wasn’t a way to parse this. He had seen him die, had felt his body getting stiffer by the minute as they Portkeyed back to the pitch. Out of all his worst moments, watching Cedric be killed had been – beyond words or feeling. Total nothingness, and absolutely everything, all at once. And yet this couldn’t be his ghost. He had felt this Cedric brush past him, not through him, and he was there, wonderfully solid, in front of Harry’s bleary eyes. 

Another moment passed. The best Harry could muster was mouthing back, _I know._ Cedric furrowed his brow, tapping his watch. _Mind the time._ He spun, and was gone. Harry groped blindly ahead, in what he hoped was the right direction. 

~~

Harry’s hands stung from pulling his way through dense thickets of kelp. His knees creaked with each kick, and his chest was bursting with the efforts of remembering to breathe, and keeping his heart inside his body. His head pounded with the why of it all. But there was no time to slow, or make sense – Gillyweed, after all, only lasts so long. And so Harry did what he usually did when he couldn’t sleep, or when work was difficult: he fixed his gaze, and centered his thoughts on the man he loved. It made the stinging go away.

His mind flitted through memories, boggart-like. _Crack._ His lover slow dancing with Molly to Celestina Warbeck, sauce bubbling over behind them. _Crack._ The triumphant, silvery glint in his eyes upon finishing that stupid Muggle puzzle in _The Guardian. Crack._ Vanishing the answers so Mr. Granger wouldn’t be cross. _Crack._ His long fingers, pulling up the hem of Harry’s shirt – 

Harry shook himself back. Now wasn’t the time. 

If his husband were here, he’d be saying that Weasley should be left behind. That it was almost dinnertime, and the water was cold, and someone else would be along to collect his friend. He’d have warm towels. And he would’ve remembered where Harry’s spare glasses were, and brought them with him, and hooked them behind Harry’s ears for him. He’d be saying, _It’s not so bad to unfinish, Chosen One._

And he would give almost anything to be able to surrender like that.

But now wasn’t the time.

~~

When he reached the clearing it was nearly as he remembered it to be – rocky, still, and tense. He squinted through the murk, seeing three empty tethers. He fought down a familiar, rising sense of failure; again, he had been last. Again, someone had been promised much more than he could give. 

With wand in hand he swam over to Ron’s body, thinking hard about how he had undone his friend’s lashings when they were in school. His body, facing the open water ahead of them, had drifted awkwardly to the side, at an angle that made things more difficult. Harry grabbed a fistful of the boy’s black robes and spun him around and upright. Harry looked at the pale, pinched face now in front of him and his mind went still in a way that would’ve been blessedly peaceful anywhere other than the bottom of a lake. This was Draco, not Ron. 

This was his husband, as he had been so many years ago. This small and raging pale fire of a boy, whom he had hated and then come to love. He looked tired, even in suspended animation. Harry’s hands went to the base of the boy’s jaw, to his delicate wrists, methodically checking for signs of life, before remembering what suspended animation meant. _Ah,_ he thought. He felt a bit thick. 

Harry grabbed Draco’s ankles and set to work, undoing the clasps anchoring him in place. One foot floated free. And then, perversely, started kicking. 

Harry’s eyes shot up and met Draco’s, now awfully alive and alert and looking at him in pure, distilled panic. His neck snapped side to side, looking for air and finding none. The white of his face was starting to tinge, purplish-red, on the planes of his cheekbones. _Oh, Jesus. Fuck._

He worked faster. He felt like crying. 

White, desperate hands grabbed at his head, knuckles twining in his briny black hair. _Stop,_ Harry wanted to say. _I’m trying, you’re not – you have to let me –_

And then the hands twisted his neck, letting him see what Draco was seeing, powerless to stop it. Far below the two, the silty lake floor was churning. Some mass of scales and fangs writhed in an elegant wreath beneath them, quietly violent. Harry stared, dumbfounded, before looking back at the boy he was clutching to the breaking point. Draco’s silver eyes were shot through with red. Harry watched as blood vessels broke in real time. _Please,_ Draco mouthed, _please please –_

And then his mouth went slack. And Harry remembered, angrily, stupidly, that he was a fucking wizard. He drew his wand and spat _reducto_ at the ropes through a mouthful of water, feeling algae film over his teeth and gasping in relief as this boy who didn’t yet know he was beloved sped upwards towards the surface, carried by whorls of water and wordless gusts of prayer. 

But the blast had woken the beast, and the gasping turned from joy to desperation. Harry grasped the sides of his neck, feeling a horrible shrinking sensation as his skin flattened and smoothed, sealing the slits that had been delivering air. The black coils beneath him twisted faster and faster, and even as Harry kicked up, and up, all he could do was sink to the lake bottom. The world was greying out, and he felt the rasp of scales brush against his torso, saw a flash of milky eyes – he thought of time spent standing in the river with Draco, freshwater plimpies babbling around their ankles. Then something tightened hard around his throat, and he thought of nothing at all.

~~

“HARRY – Harry – please, please – I need you to – here, let’s turn you on your side – “ 

He froze.

He was – alive. And on his bedroom floor. He coughed once, wetly. He cried a little, eyes still screwed shut. 

Kisses came down on Harry’s cheeks as slender, shaking hands tugged at the bedsheets that had knotted themselves around the man’s neck. “Sweetheart, lift up – there.” Draco lifted Harry’s torso a little off the floor, gathering the rest of the twisted sheets. He placed his hand behind Harry’s head to guide it back down, hissing at the wet patch he felt at the base of the skull. He bundled the sheets together, quickly wiping his hand on the cotton before resting his husband’s head on it. He wouldn’t mention the blood unless he had to. 

Harry opened his eyes. Even unfocused, concussed, in a night-dark room, he could make out his lover’s kind, incredulous eyes. Silver eyes, fuzzy with emotion. He reached a hand out for his glasses, and patted until he felt one snapped earpiece, and a little pile of crushed glass. “Ah,” he said. “Shit.” 

“Sweetheart, you were – having a nightmare, and you sort of tossed yourself over the side. You took the bedside table with you, and I think you hit your head on it – you started seizing. A little. God, I’m so sorry you’re hurt – “ Draco cut himself off, gasping a little. He shook his head and cleared his thoughts. “You have an old pair in the writing desk, I’ll get them. Don’t move.” 

Harry wouldn’t have dared. He laid there, shutting his eyes again, letting go of each muscle and letting the wondrously solid floor hold him up. 

Some time passed. Draco came back. He always did. The miracle of him. 

Harry let him hook his old glasses behind his ears. It was too hard to pick up his own head. 

Draco’s voice was kind but serious. "I heard you – calling for Cedric. But then you said my name. And then I thought you were awake, but you were somewhere in between. I’m sorry, I couldn’t get you out of it.” 

“No,” said Harry, thickly. He thought for a moment about how to describe what he’d seen, what he’d had to do. It was hard. It was already starting to fade from him, replaced by the here and now of stiff, seized muscles and a throbbing head.

“I don’t know how to say it. But I’m glad you’ve grown up again.” 

Draco looked as though he was about to question him further, but was interrupted by a crash and subsequent clatter from the kitchen. 

“Damn those copper pots – that’ll be the Healers in the hearth, then. And I know how you feel about them. But don’t be cross.” 

He tucked a lock of his husband’s dark hair behind his ear. Harry reached up and caught him by the wrist, pressing it to his mouth. “I’m not cross,” he murmured against it. The door opened and the two blinked at the hallway light and the medical bustle that took them out of this moment, that made the world bigger than them, on the floor, in the dark. And Harry kept Draco’s hand in his.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for letting me experiment with these people we love. Here's hoping for some calmer nights ahead.
> 
> Title comes from "Aquarius," by Regina Spektor.


End file.
